Origins of the modern game (1450–1850) of Chess

The pieces in shatranj had limited movement; the elephant or aufin (the predecessor of the modern bishop) could only move by jumping two spaces diagonally, the counselor or fers (the predecessor of the modern queen) could move only one space diagonally, pawns could not advance two spaces on their first move, and there was no castling. Also, pawns could only promote to counselor, which was the weakest piece (after the pawn), due to its limited range.[7]
Around 1200, rules started to be modified in southern Europe, and around 1475, several major changes rendered the game essentially as it is known today.[8] These modern rules for the basic moves had been adopted in Italy[9] (or in Spain according to other sources[10]): pawns gained the option of advancing two squares on their first move and the en passant capture therewith, while bishops and queens acquired their modern abilities. This made the queen the most powerful piece; consequently modern chess was referred to as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess".[11] These new rules quickly spread throughout western Europe, with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which varied from place to place and were finalized in the early 19th century.[12]
This was also the time when chess started to develop a corpus of theory. The oldest preserved printed chess book, Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess) by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena was published in Salamanca in 1497.[13] Lucena and later masters of the 16th and 17th century like Portuguese Pedro Damiano, Italians Giovanni Leonardo Di Bona, Giulio Cesare Polerio and Gioachino Greco or Spanish bishop Ruy López de Segura developed elements of openings, such as the Italian Game, King's Gambit and Ruy Lopez, and started to analyze simple endgames.
In the 18th century the center of European chess life moved from the Southern European countries to France. The two most important French masters were François-André Danican Philidor, a musician by profession, who discovered the importance of pawns for chess strategy, and later Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais who won a famous series of matches with the strongest British master of the time, Alexander McDonnell from Ireland, in 1834.[14] Centers of chess life in this period were coffee houses in big European cities like Café de la Régence in Paris[15] and Simpson's Divan in London.[16]

As the 19th century progressed, chess organization developed quickly. Many chess clubs, chess books and chess journals appeared. There were correspondence matches between cities; for example the London Chess Club played against the Edinburgh Chess Club in 1824.[17] Chess problems became a regular part of 19th century newspapers; Bernhard Horwitz, Josef Kling and Samuel Loyd composed some of the most influential problems. In 1843, the first edition of Handbuch des Schachspiels (Handbook of Chess) was published; written by German chess masters Paul Rudolf von Bilguer and Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa, it was the first comprehensive manual of chess theory.